Crafting at the Fitz

First, thanks for all the good wishes; I'm happy to report that my ear is on the mend! Not only that, but I'm feeling up to socialising again and I've just spent a wonderful day at the Fitzwilliam Museum, crocheting coral. The workshop was part of a Crafts Council Project and also ties in with the fascinating Darwin exhibition which is on at the Fitz at the moment. The project is supplying kits (materials, ideas and worksheets) to community groups, schools and galleries who would like to create their own reefs which should, eventually, be merged with the reef that started at the South Bank last summer before touring (and growing ever-bigger) at the Knitting & Stitching Shows. Its eventual destination looks set to be the Eden Project. The Fitz already had a couple of mini reefs on display. One that had been started at the Sedgwick and fabulous selection of work from a community group and a primary school in the Kings hedges area of Cambridge.

I'd forgotten just how much fun you can have armed with yarn and crochet hook, surrounded by fellow fibre fiends. But I'd also (yet again) forgotten my camera. So you'll just have to take my word for it that some fabulous forms were created and quite a few newcomers have become"hooked" on crochet.

a total pain in the ears...

Sorry, still no photos and no crafty items to report either. All due, alas, to a boring ear infection that has now been complicated by a boil in one of my ear canals. Ouch. Hoping the latest course of anitbiotics will do their trick...

outings 2, photos nil

Is anyone else old enough to remember when the football results used to come in via the noisy old teleprinter?

Anyway, here's my life summed up in a few results...

week commencing Sat 1 June 2009: outings 2, photos nil

week commencing Sat 8 June 2009: social events cancelled 4, germs too many to count

(I'm currently deaf in one ear, and can neither taste nor smell things but at least I've not had to take Tamiflu, unlike Daisy!)

Last weeks outings were huge fun and I'm so cross with myself for forgetting the camera not once, but twice. I went to Ely (again) and Mr CK and I were taken on a grand tour of Hackney Downs and Bethnal Green (his daughter lives there) which included Prick Your Finger, the Museum of Childhood and Victoria Park.

The display of crocheted lizards (and a frog) at PYF is amazing (sadly I missed the hunk erecting the sign... but the blog makes intersting viewing) and we all had huge fun at the museum. I particularly like the Quentin Blake and Roald Dahl exhibition they have on the moment. Birthday girl (aged 29) took full advantage of the boxes of dressing up clothes!

I shall draw a veil over this week...

if you do just one thing tomorrow....

USE YOUR VOTE!

(Sorry for shouting, this is something that has mattered to me enormously ever since I was 14, or so, when my Guide Leader told us about the Suffragettes).

Mayday awayday

The 1st of May was going to be the day that I tidied my desk, tidied my computer files and did heaps of other overdue tasks. But the sun was shining, the birds were singing and, well, it was the first of May. Not only that, I needed yet more plastic boxes to store yet more stash. And when it comes to plastic boxes, only Thing Me Bobs shops have the type I like at a price I like. And is there a thing Me Bobs in Cambridge? Why, no. Instead, I have to make the difficult choice between going to Newmarket, Bury St Edmunds or Ely.

I'm glad that I chose Ely: look what I saw!

Foal dozing near the cathderal...

Flowers sprouting out from the top of a wall (I'm taking quite a few wall photos at the moment, and am thinking of doing some wallflower pots)...

And a wonderfully gnarled tree.

I came home with 2 boxes and also (mysteriously) rather a lot of books and magazines (some were gifts, but most were of the knitting and crochet variety).

an evening stroll in the millennium garden

What's this: Mr Caught Knitting out and about sans hat and backpack?

Why, yes. This stroll was taken a couple of evenings ago, just before dusk and in a light sprinkle of drizzle (hence the umbrella that you'll see peeping out above the cow parsley)...

Editor's note: we wish to reassure readers that normal service (ie pictures of Mr CK with hat and backpack) will be resumed as soon as possible.

But not just yet....

Harry Potter in dramatic ageing sensation!

(This is, in fact, Mr Caught Knitting off to a Supervisors' Dinner at a Cambridge College. The dress code said "gown and lounge suite" but the final "e" had been scored out in biro, so I managed to talk Mr CK out of his plan to take an occassional table with him by way of accessory... I'd better point out that, in the unlikely event of your recognising Mr CK's college tie, this is not, repeat not, the college that made the spelling mistake!)

long time, no blog

Ye gods, is it really more than a month since I last blogged?

I could pretend that I've been immersed in producing a masterpiece (or two); that I'd been trekking through inhospitable desert (for the good of my soul); or many other crazy or unlikely fibs.

The truth is rather more exciting (for me, if not for anyone reading this). I've been having a lazy, wonderful time. (Punctuated by some health wibbles, but most of these are now dismissed).

First, I've been on a winning streak: I'm now the proud (and colourful) owner of these decidedly dashing "smalls", dazzlingly dyed by the lovely Ambermoggie. And, within hours of hearing that I'd won them, I discovered that I'd also won The Morville Hours Karen's non-fiction book giveaway. What an engrossing book it is, definately the work of a polymath. I've scarcely been able to put it down since I received it and, having finished it last week, am poised to embark on an almost immediate reread. It has shot straight into second place in my all-time-favourtie books chart. (Number one is still The Leaping Hare.)

During the time I've been able to tear myself away from the book I've been on several adventures, including a trip to Hay on Wye which just happened to coincide with a certain Wonderwool Wales and a workshop in Hay with one Prudence Mapstone. Good job that there were innumerable bookshops (and an ice cream parlour) to absorb Mr Caught Knitting the while... I've also been on a May Day away day; got a permanent contract at work (yay!) and signed up for a City and Guilds diploma in handknitting (guess who should be doing her homework now this instant?)

Posts with pictures will follow but the sun is shining, Mr CK is at home and I think we should take advantage of the weather to go for a stroll!

my new heroine: Maria from l'Aquila

It was the Yarn Harlot who drew our attention to a report from Cambridge University which concluded that, whilst knitting had a marked effect on coping with the aftermath of trauma, few people were likely to carry "emergency knitting".

Fortunately 98-year old Maria D'Antuono of L'Aquila has proved to the researchers that, sometimes, people do have emergency crochet to hand. According to the guardian and Ansa news agency, she spent 30 hours waiting for rescuers to dig her out after last week's earthquake and, asked how she had passed her time, she reportedly said that "she had been busy with her hook and wool".

Rescuers gave her a packet of biscuits, but she asked for a comb, so that she would look decent on arrival at hospital.

Respect!